Hi,
First all, apologies if this is the wrong place to post this but I wasn't sure it fitted anywhere else.

I have got a system here which I have installed a minimal Debian system on and set up to do some server tasks that I need. I now need to duplicate this setup on to a number of other PCs (which should hopefully have the same hardware config). What's the easiest way of doing this?

One way is to use Norton Ghost which is what I've done to create the first clone system, however I had issues in that after ghosting LILO wouldn't boot and my ext3 file system had been converted back to ext2. I managed to fix this by using a rescue disk and re-running lilo and tune2fs. Also another issue is that because it is a complete drive image all the networking settings are duplicated and so they need to be changed.

Ideally I guess I would like some kind of Linux based installer which runs off CD and will set the systems up for me in a similar kind of way that Smoothwall and other specialised distributions do. Unfortunatly I have no idea how to go about doing this or even where to look for any kind of information. Can anyone give me any pointers?

Also, I am open to other suggestions if anybody has any?

- David

You might want to read the Linux File-system Hierarchy's Standard as well as one of the SAG guides
http://www.tldp.org/guides.html

Some distros have a option to save your selections on a floppy and use the install floppy to make the selections during the installation. If any of the devices on the computer are different, cloning a computer won't work because the wrong drivers might be used. Even identical models of NIC cards for example might use a different controller chip inside, and this is what determines which driver is used.

Each computer needs a unique name and ip address to function properly. If you clone a computer, you may miss something in the /etc directory which needs to be changed.

There is a book on Automating linux administration that you might want to pick up for the future. If you need to administer several linux computers, you need to come up with a system to apply patches to all of the machines, replicate program installations, etc.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...68835?v=glance

I don't know what type of servers you need to set up or how many there are. You might want to consider sharing some partitions such as /usr /bin /sbin. This will make it easier to install new programs, because the programs would need to be installed once on the server where this drive is located. The LFHS guide provides details and recommendations for doing this.

Some applications like Open Office allow you to install to a central server, and supply a network install which each user runs to install the program to run off the server.

Another thing to consider is performing backups. If the computers have identical or shared /usr, /bin, /sbin, etc partitions, only one set needs to be backed up.

I hope I gave you some ideas. Good Luck!

Use system rescue cd and partimage. Partimage is a clone for drive image (for win). Very good software, does exactly what you need. Read the docs first.

System rescue is a live cd aimed at maintenance. Incredible tool.

http://www.sysresccd.org/

I like the idea of the SystemRescueCD and a partition image. That could work. Then all I would need to do is write a script to automatically partition the disc, write the partition image, and then modify the network settings. I will have to look into that...

A while ago I played with a distibution called Knoppmyth which was MythTV (the Linux PVR project) combined with Knoppix so that you just put the CD in a drive and it would automatically build a system for you (partitioning, formatting, installing, configuring, etc.) without you having to do anything.

BTW - The "server" is just a system with a minimal install of debian with MySQL, Apache and Tomcat along with some Java Servlets and other applications that I have created all running on a MiniITX board (hence why all the hardware should be the same).

Thanks for you suggestions.

- David

Hey! I need that! Is knoppmyth good? Did you like it?

It's been a while since I used it but I was very impressed. Just put the disk in and it did the rest. Much easier than installing something like Debian or Mandrake and then having to compile MythTV from source and get all the dependencies, etc.

http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html

I've now tried that SystemRescueCD and I have to say I was very impressed. I made a partition image of my original hard disk to a network share. I then removed the hard disk and put it somewhere safe and put in a new blank hard disk in. I was then able to boot using SystemRescue, partition the new disk, restore the image, and configure LILO. At this point I didn't have much hope it it booting, but it did!! It works perfectly!!

Now all I need to do is make a custom SystemRescue to automate this for me. I will need to add the partition image to the CD (its only 230Mb), and create an auto-run script to partition the disk, restore the image and run lilo. I could even get the script to mount the partion and configure passwords and IP addresses.